The cruelest insult to Harvey and Irma's victims
Source: Washington Post
The cruelest insult to Harvey and Irma’s victims
By Eugene Robinson Opinion writer September 11 at 7:30 PM
When, if not now, is the time to talk about global warming and what to do about it? The answer from the Trump administration and the Republican Party, basically, is succinct in its willful ignorance: “How about never? Is never good for you?”
No rational U.S. administration would look at the devastation from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and seek to deny climate change. At present, however, there is no rational U.S. administration.
We have instead a president and an Environmental Protection Agency chief who refuse to acknowledge the obvious. Thoughts and prayers are welcome at times such as these, but they are insincere if not supplemented by analysis and action. Future megastorms will likely be worse, scientists say; the question for policymakers is to what degree.
According to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, for scientists to “use time and effort to address” the cause of these massive, anomalous storms would be “very, very insensitive to [the] people in Florida.” If I search the archives, I can come up with a few statements from Trump administration officials that are more irresponsible, but not many.
Why did Harvey dump unprecedented, almost biblical amounts of rainfall on Houston and its environs? Why did Irma spend longer as a Category 5 storm than any other Atlantic hurricane on record? Why, for the first time anyone knows of, did we have two Atlantic Category 4 storms make U.S. landfall in the same season? Why did we have two major hurricanes (Irma and Jose) and a third, somewhat lesser storm (Katia) churning at the same time?
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-cruelest-insult-to-harvey-and-irmas-victims/2017/09/11/60e54caa-9715-11e7-82e4-f1076f6d6152_story.html
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One of the wisest voices of our time! 
